How to write a Story

It was for the first time, that Rishi sat down to write a story, and did not feel like a writer. He had been cut-off from this world for 4 months now, and the only reason he wanted to write a story was the desire to re-experience the euphoric delight one feels after completing something which has sweat invested in it.

So he began, thinking first as to how he had written his previous stories. Observing the process from its birth. Reminiscing, he realised that a lot of them arose from his school experiences. And those days were no longer a distinct memory. Surely not something that elicited much emotional response. If at all, he chose to write a story on those experiences then he’d have to make a lot of mental effort. Something, which Rishi shied away from doing at the moment.

The memory which was fresh in him, and which he cherished now was his last four months in a place, outside where he had lived all his life. He tried writing a story from his experiences there, but he could not find any single thread of moment which he could convert into a tale.

The reasons for this were there, Rishi had been a writer of stories usually picked from his own life and where the main character generally had a detached lonely point of view. That was seldom his point of view in the last few months. And even if this point of view was available, there was no crisis moment to go with it, which Rishi considered as the engine that made the story run.

As he was wondering these things, he understood what moment of crises he was going to take. The logic was acceptable to him, it was not one of those silly pieces in school magazine, where a person writes on the topic of ‘I have nothing to write about’. This was more advanced. Something that revealed the inner working’s of a writer’s mind. Something that tells the readers what it might be like, to be a writer.

If he read this story, by some other writer, he wouldn’t scoff at the fundamental lameness of their effort. And, that was how the story passed its litmus test, and is here before you.